The main thing we learn from The Time Traveler's Wife is that while it would really suck to be flung in and out of time at random intervals, it's actually worse to be married to someone with that problem. Also, if you're a little girl and a naked man shows up in your garden, it's okay to be his secret friend if he's Eric Bana.
The novel on which the movie is based, written by Audrey Niffenegger, is warm, funny, touching and ultimately heartbreaking. It's also the sort of book that you read and think, wow, there's no way that they could make a good film out of this, since it tells the story from two characters' alternating points of view, jumping forward and back through time, both during the linear "real time" of their love story and the occasions where Henry pops in on Clare when she's a little girl and a teenager.
Surprisingly, the film adaptation isn't terrible. It's not especially noteworthy, either, serving as more of a slideshow presentation of the main events of the novel, skipping over all of the texture, humor, characterization and detail that made the story so popular in the first place. If you've read the book, watching the movie is a little like looking at snapshots from a really great vacation you took sometime last year. And, judging by conversations I had with a few people after the movie, if you haven't read the book you may find yourself sometimes wondering what the hell's going on.
Not helping matters is a bland turn by Bana, who certainly looks good nekkid (it would seem that one cannot take one's clothes along when one travels through time) but offers yet another performance that consists entirely of him placidly staring at his co-stars and exclaiming dialogue in a flat voice. Given his body of work so far, it was frankly shocking to see how personable Bana was in the recent Funny People -- but then, he was speaking in his native Australian accent. Whenever he plays Americans, he's as exciting as a bowl of Cream of Wheat. Maybe having to concentrate on his vowel sounds is so taxing, it sucks all the pizzazz right out of him.
Rachel McAdams is predictably dewy, feisty, and charming as Clare, and she has more of a character to work with here. But she's ill-served by a script that repeatedly fails to sell the very things that made the novel sing. Her first meeting with Henry, when he shows up as a middle-aged man in that meadow sans pants, is supposed to be charming, but comes off as sort of creepy anyway. And the couple's wedding dance, a gravelly, robotic, dirge-like version of Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart" performed by Broken Social Scene, is so gloomy and out-of-sync with the rest of the film, it made me wonder if there was an unused subplot in which Henry and Clare are secretly super-emo goths.
There aren't many films that can legitimately claim to be sci-fi chick flicks, but in dumbing down a complicated story, The Time Traveler's Wife comes in as a little more than a tepid weepie. Fans of the book will be able to fill in the (considerable) blanks, but for everyone else, it may be a waste of time.